


Succor

by extentia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Scott is a Bad Alpha, minor PTSD mention, nonlinear story telling, true alpha scott my butthole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:33:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7033768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extentia/pseuds/extentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's only mildly inconvenienced that he has to rip out the throat of whatever creature it was that just came barrelling at them through the woods. Stiles's heart beat goes a little funny. He grins.</p><p>   "Yeah." He concurs easily. "Probably all Scott's fault."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Succor

**Author's Note:**

> "He's the Alpha. He was always meant to be the Alpha. He'll make it all right." - Meredith 4x10

         “This is probably Scott’s fault,” Peter tells him with a sigh to emphasize his frustration.

        He wipes the blood off this face with a handkerchief. He doesn’t look bothered… just inconvenienced, or maybe tired. Peter is only mildly inconvenienced that he has to rip out the throat of whatever creature it was that just came barreling at them through the woods. Stiles’s heart beat goes a little funny. He grins.

        “Yeah.” Stiles concurs easily. “Probably all Scott’s fault”

* * *

 

        It is, in fact, all Scott’s fault. As it turns out, Scott had talked to them – them who Stiles finds out are some Dryads, and they _absolutely promised_ it was only a misunderstanding and _it will NEVER happen again, True Alpha McCall._

        Yeah, an absolute misunderstanding that the few humans they killed were, in fact, sentient. The Dryads insisted they really had no idea that _all_ humans had sentience. Sure. And, seriously, what could have convinced Scott that the Dryads were telling the truth?

* * *

 

        Stiles is almost hysterical when he tells Peter that Scott found out there were Dryads murdering in the preserve and Scott just let them go after what he considered giving them a strict talking to. It was funny, in that deadpan-how-is-Scott-even-real kind of way.

        Peter stays quiet though. It takes Stiles a few minutes to realize that he isn’t laughing with him. Peter’s sticking a sickened smile on his face, just playing along.

       “What’s not funny about this?” Stiles asks between a few gasping breaths. He wipes away a single tear that’s managed to escape in his amusement.

       Peter doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He just gets up and walks around his apartment, looking anywhere but at Stiles, which Stiles find a little unnerving.

       Eventually, Peter turns around, takes a deep breath and lets it out in an aborted sigh.

       When Peter tries again, just after the first attempt, he looks weary.

        “Scott doesn’t understand what he’s doing.” Peter’s tense. “To the pack, to his pack. I don’t know if there’s a way to get through to him, Stiles. I’m at a loss.”

        “Seriously? Not even I can get through to him sometimes. He’s so hard-headed, man. I just deal with it. When things get bad,” because they always get bad, Stiles doesn’t say. “When things get bad, Scott always has his head on right. It’s nothing to worry about, honestly.”

       Stiles hopes he’s doing right here – right by the pack, right by Scott, and right by Peter. Stiles has known Scott his entire life, so it’s safe to say he has a good perspective to judge from. And yeah, Scott is a little sloppy and easily trusting, but he’s never done wrong by his pack. So, Peter’s just gonna have to trust that Stiles knows, really knows, that Scott is not as incapable as he seems sometimes.

* * *

 

        Peter and Stiles take walks through the preserve regularly. It serves dual purposes. For Stiles, the long walks with Peter are _so romantic,_ and they get to spend _so much time together, Peter. This is awesome. Stay clear of the two Eichen House graduates mother fucker because we’re patrolling the woods everyday! Ha!_

        The walks for Peter are more about protection and safety. And Stiles knows that, which is why he doesn’t say anything when Peter decides they need to walk further than normal, or they have to circle their path twice, or thrice daily. Because Stiles knows, or he thinks he knows, how important it is for Peter to feel safe.

        Stiles doesn’t connect Scott’s increasing inefficiency at taking out enemies to Peter’s increasing insistence that they double check and triple check everything. Peter just gets that way sometimes.  Anyway. It’s fine. It ebbs and it flows. Soon Peter will be back to sassing and derision. Stiles just… he just has to support Peter now and wait for things to calm down in his head.

* * *

 

        Stiles looked up PTSD, extensively, when he and Peter first started dancing around each other, years ago. And he’s had some luck in figuring out Peter’s triggers.

        Like, Peter closes off when he has to spend time with anyone that reminds him of Laura or Valack. And he plays it off, sure, but for a few days after every encounter, Stiles can’t get Peter to share anything – not his feelings, his thoughts, nor any opinions. Stiles doesn’t understand, exactly, but he knows to intervene on Peter’s behalf if he knows he can save Peter trouble later.

* * *

 

       Stiles also comes to find out that Peter is not okay with fire – at all. Which, duh, you’d think so huh? But Peter plays it off. Peter plays everything off. It churns in Stiles’s stomach some days. How _not fine_ can you be if you can’t even discuss how _not fine_ you are?

        Stiles spent months – literally months – joking about fire, and playing around with it when Peter was with him. So Stiles thought it was no big deal, really, because Peter didn’t get stone still, he didn’t close himself off, and he didn’t act strangely. So, yeah, it’s fine. Peter’s remarkably well adjusted. Peter’s strong. Peter’s fine.

* * *

 

        Stiles has been sneaking off to Peter’s place whenever he can, but he did it more often before they went public with their relationship. This night, Stiles is quite pleased to find out his dad picked up an extra night shift. So he says goodbye, gives his dad a tentative hug, and makes his way over to Peter’s.

        He lets himself in because… Hey this is a surprise, alright? More importantly, Peter would have heard him from the moment he was outside the door. So, if Peter’s going to allow him to ‘surprise’ him, then Stiles is just going to play along. It’s fun this way. They both know what’s going to come, and Stiles gets to pretend he’s in control for a while.

        Peter’s in the shower. Or, he’s about to be. When he heard Stiles come in, he probably decided to shed all his clothes and jump in.

        So Stiles takes off his shirt and throws it over the back of some of Peter’s furniture. He doesn’t look for where it lands, but he’s sure he’ll find it when he decides to leave. He’s got a giant grin on his face. Stiles loves how patiently Peter waits for Stiles to talk, just so that he can understand him better. He understands how much Stiles needs to pretend he has the element of surprise sometimes, and how hard that is to come by when everyone he knows, his lover included, has super senses.

        He opens the door, pretty sure he's looking predatory, pretty sure he’s gonna top tonight, and pretty sure he’s going to like playing whatever game Peter has in mind.

        He chokes on his spit when the open door reveals Peter sitting on the floor of the shower. He’s naked, Stiles thinks, curled into a ball… and he’s sitting on the floor under the shower. Stiles is in shock for a moment.

        “Peter?” Stiles asks tentatively, “I didn’t know, I just – I’m gonna…”

        Stiles is already reaching behind him for the door handle. What happened? Should he even ask?

        But then he realizes something – Peter was crying. Peter was sobbing, in fact, and he stopped once he noticed Stiles in the room. Stiles can’t see Peter’s face, only the blurry outline through the glass door.

        He expects Peter to yell, or lash out. But he just sits there, pretending he’s not crying. And Stiles’ heart breaks.

        He gets into the shower still in his pants, and he gets soaked, but he doesn’t care. Peter barely allows himself to resume crying, but Stiles feels the minute shakes that wrack his body every few moments. He wraps his arm tighter around Peter. He whispers comforting words, or he tries. He’s trying to figure out what brought Peter to crying alone in his shower when it clicks.

        Peter was on fire today.

        They’d been dealing with vampires. And getting close to a vampire was a stupid move, even for werewolves, so they set up a trap, and it worked. All of the vampires bothering them caught fire. Most of them burned instantly. A few took to running in terror, fleeing, stop-drop-and-rolling – basically doing anything to get away from the pack while they were weak. Doing anything to save themselves and retreat so they could heal.

        So Stiles took an axe to one of them; the guy was pretty much not moving anymore. Scott and some of the other Weres started to run after the ones fleeing. And Peter stayed behind to look after Stiles. Stiles is only human, after all.

        When Stiles turned to Peter to find one of the vampires he thought was actually dead embracing Peter, his mind blanked. For a long second, there was just Peter and the vampire wrestling. Peter hit the ground and began rolling while the vampire refused to let go. Peter snarled and growled and Stiles just stood there dumbfounded.

        It was only a few seconds before Peter yelped and Stiles’s brain kicked back into action. He grabbed the fire extinguisher he brought because he just _knew_ something like this would happen, and thoroughly doused both Peter and the vampire.

        Peter took the chance to recover and Stiles swung the axe down and chopped the vampire’s head off in a clean blow. He didn’t work on those muscles for nothing! He gave Peter a sheepish look and helped him up. His skin was already healed by then, so it didn’t seem notable.

        Peter just got up, gave Stiles a kiss on the cheek and thanked him. There was no weird behavior. There was no awkwardness. There was nothing until that night, in the shower.

* * *

 

        “I’m sorry.” Stiles admits, “I should have realized.”

        He strokes Peter’s head and readjusts them both so Peter’s cuddled into him instead of the other way around. He’s a little uncomfortable under the spray of the water, and he wonders if this could possibly be a healthy behavior, but he stays as still as his body will allow and lets Peter relax into him. They’ll get out of the shower eventually.

* * *

        A week, almost exactly, after the dryad incident, Stiles is actually around to watch Scott let the leader of a group of goblins, or fairies, or something, leave with the few members of their family the pack didn’t end up killing.

        Stiles complains to Peter about it, loudly, for a few days.

* * *

        When the fairies come back ( _and they are fairies,_ Peter insists) they take the lives of a few people that work at the hospital and almost kill Stiles.

        Stiles almost dies.

        Stiles almost dies and Peter tears through every last one of them.

* * *

        “She was the same,” Peter spits out. “She was the same as Scott.”

        Stiles is half delirious, lounging on Peter’s couch. They only let him leave the hospital a few hours ago. He just took one of the pain meds the doctors prescribed for him.

        “Scott’s going to get us all killed. Stiles, Scott’s going to drag us all down with him. You have to see that, right? Stiles, he’s just like Talia.”

        Stiles has a startling moment of clarity. His heart rate spikes. His adrenaline pumps.

        This is what Stiles has been missing. Peter thinks Scott’s going to do to them what Talia did.

        Peter gives a near-inaudible whine and buries his face into Stiles’s torso.

        “He’s gonna kill us all,” Stiles whispers the revelation. He doesn’t know how he’s never seen it before.

        “True alpha. Pfft,” Peter sneers, mask of casual indifference back in place. Stiles can see through it easier than ever.

        “That’s never gonna happen.” Stiles tells him.

        Peter starts to speak, but Stiles won’t have it.

        “No. We can’t – You can’t. . . Look, never again. Okay. We’ll do something. Figure something out. I’ll help you. Okay. We’re in this together.”

        Stiles grabs for Peter’s hand and gives it a tentative squeeze. Peter looks at Stiles like he holds the entire world in his hands, and for Stiles there’s no going back.

* * *

        Stiles sets an alpha up to die. It’s unimportant who, exactly, but Stiles makes a valiant effort to be sure that they’re worth being killed.

        Under the guise of a meeting with the McCall pack’s right hand, an Alpha comes and an Alpha dies.

* * *

 

        Peter wipes his hands and his face with another handkerchief. Stiles wonders where he can even buy handkerchiefs now-a-days. Probably any store that smells like old people and death.

* * *

 

        They tell Derek he’s welcome to come with them into Peter’s new territory. Derek spreads the word to Cora.

* * *

 

        Scott shuns Stiles for the better part of a year before he finally answers the messages Stiles never stops sending him.

* * *

 

        Peter and Stiles never hesitate to eliminate threats. They live safe, if a bit bloody and feared. The territory isn’t particularly spectacular, if they’re honest. There’s probably not more than 10,000 people in the city.

* * *

 

        Stiles gets giddy whenever Peter flashes his _red Alpha eyes_ at a new threat and they cower away. Because he did that for him - Stiles gave Peter what he needed more than anything. And Peter will always do everything in his power to make sure his pack is safe.

        After all, he was always meant to be the alpha.

        Their pack grows and Peter still manages to keep them all safe.

Yeah, Peter was always meant to be the alpha.

**Author's Note:**

> A wonderful thank you for my beta, who helps me with my grammar when the word seems bleak & gave me the prompt that inspired this! http://archiveofourown.org/users/Eenna


End file.
